By Jessica Belasco :
September 20, 2010

The winners of the Texas Yoga Regional Asana Championship will be able to add medals, certificates and gift cards to that list.

On Sunday, about 70 yoga practitioners will compete at the eighth annual event, hosted this year in San Antonio at the Pearl Stable. It begins at 10 a.m. and admission costs $10.

Isn't competition the antithesis of yoga? Not according to Lisa Ingle, the regional organizer of the championship and coowner of Bikram Yoga San Antonio. She says the event is less about cutthroat rivalry and more about promoting the physical facet of yoga.

"A lot of people think there's a religious connotation to yoga, and there can be, but that's personal choice," she says. "I think a lot of people think it includes chanting and burning incense."

The winners of the Texas event will advance to the national championship in Los Angeles in March.

They hope competi­tions will attract people to the discipline and gain support for their movement to make yoga an Olympic sport.

"Yoga is a sport in the fact that it takes a huge amount of control of the body and concentration to do it," Ingle says.

At the competition, participants will have three minutes to execute five compulsory yoga asanas (poses) and two poses of their choice.

The judges, including Rajashree Choudhury, will score them on execution of the pose, grace, style and general appearance, among other criteria.

There are winners in three categories: men, women and youth ages 11-17. Ingle says the competitors will represent a wide range of ages and body types.

Yoga competitions have long been held in India, the birthplace of yoga, and they're growing more popular in the U.S., but that doesn't mean they're not controversial.

Some practitioners believe competitions contradict the philosophy of the millennia-old discipline, which emphasizes personal growth.

Even Jill Tarpey, a yoga instructor in San Antonio who placed second in the state championship last year and ninth in nationals, has mixed feelings about the concept.

"It can get very aesthetic," says Tarpey, who is not competing this year. "It depends on how you approach it. For me, it was a very internal thing. I did it really for the personal growth of my own practice. At nationals, I didn't really get a competitive vibe from anybody. It felt like a very supportive environment."

The promotion of yoga is a positive result of competitions, she adds, but she worries that adding a competitive element might intimidate newcomers to yoga.

"It's not about looking a specific way in a posture, because everyone's going to look different," she says. "It's about what it's doing for your body."